Adobe Cloud offers leg up over Creative Suite's price wall

Monthly subscription for casual turtleneck types

Adobe has launched its mighty Creative Suite in to the cloud, potentially giving designers and illustrators a slightly more affordable way to access its reassuringly expensive tools.

On Monday the company unveiled Creative Suite 6, which is available for the first time on a subscription basis from the Creative Cloud, also launched and announced in February.

Creative Suite 6 packs 14 applications and four bundles for producing stuff for print and online, while cloud accounts come with 20GB of online storage letting arty types store and synchronise files between different machines.

Also included with Creative Cloud is Adobe Touch Apps, a suite featuring Photoshop and other tools for the iPad and Android devices. It's priced $9.99.

Creative cloud pricing starts at $49.99 (£46.88) per month for individuals if you sign up for a year and $74.99 (£70.32) per month on a month-to-month membership.

That compares to $1,899 for the full Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design and Web Premium and also Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium, and $2,599 for Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection.

The cloud is a gamble for Adobe. The company is targeting the grey market of consultants, freelancers or casual creatives who can't, or won't, pay for Creative Suite.

It will hope enough of these sign up on an annual basis - paying more in the long run - to boost its bottom line, or switch to paying for a full licence. The more traditional in-house creative worker is less likely to move to the cloud as their machines will be fixed, so file synching will be less important, while their software is paid for by their employer so the price won't be an issue. ®